Childminder discounts for siblings?

[moomin35]

Can anyone tell me what kind of discount you might be offered if you sent two children to a childminder rather than one? Thank you

It depends, everyone sets their own prices, maybe knock £2 off per hour. So if you charged £5 per child, rather than charging £10, charge £8

I don't offer a discount for school aged children but do offer 50p an hour discount if there are two preschoolers.

My CM charges half rate for siblings but for the eldest sibling. So if your three year old goes full time and then you decide to send the one year old, the discount goes to the eldest child and the one year old is full price.

I do not offer sibling discounts. Of anything they are harder work and I'd like to charge more

I have offered a 10% discount on one set of siblings as one was over 8 so didn't affect my numbers.

Each child minder sets there ownprices though

I only get a discount in school holidays, 50p per hour. So instead of £9 its £8.50 for both of them (£4.50 each term time)

I don't generally offer a sibling discount, as the place is still being taken.
However, I did on one occasion give a lady with 3 children a discount for her eldest child who was 9, so instead of £4 p/h p/p I charged her £10 p/h for all 3 during the summer holidays.

I don't give a discount either. The children are no less work just because they are related. Like somebody else said they are often more work because they fight more.

Our nursery did 5% off.

I imagine it's not about it being less work but more making it a tiny bit less expensive for parents of two or more, making it less likely they'll switch to a nanny or a SAHP.

Not only do I not give a sibling discount, I also increase my notice period to 6 weeks (from usual 4). Siblings still take up the same number of places, eat the same food, still require the same amount of admin & eyfs docs so no way would I discount unless I was desperate. I increase notice period because to lose 2 places (my 3 sibling groups are all 1 eyfs & 1 school child) and to lose a family would be a steep drop in income & of course 2 places are harder to fill than 1!

All that said, I'm in a high demand area so can afford to stick to this but if I were struggling to fill places I may well consider it.

I try to knock a couple of pounds of a day. Not much, but over a week it's £10 off, over a month £40+. I appreciate childcare is expensive, but it is a cost that parents know about before they have a second child and it is generally only very expensive for a couple of years before one child starts school.

I don't offer a sibling discount and I arrange notice at 4 weeks per child (4 weeks for one child, 8 weeks for two, etc).

I definitely take the point that two children is no less work just because they are siblings, so why offer discount. But I am quite mindful of the fact that my fees are at the higher end of my area and even though I know I'm worth it, if I started asking for double, I would worry some families would feel the pinch too much and go elsewhere, perhaps to someone not so good. It doesn't make a difference to me to offer slight discount, but it does to parents.

I used to give a discount of 50p per hour for siblings(I charge £3.65 ph), discount given to the oldest children. I had 4 children here once from the same family and it worked out to be a huge drop in income and as other have said it can also be extra work as they do tend to fight more.

About 3 years ago I wanted to put my fees up to cover the increase in price of food , extra cost in heating etc , so rather than putting the hourly fees up, when new families came along I stopped offering the discount and kept to the one hourly fee for all and have managed to keep my hourly fee slighlty below most of the others around here by doing so.

Most don't offer a sibling discount as far as I know. They might if they were finding it hard to fill the spot but that's rarely a problem. Why would they want to take on a sibling for less if they could fill the spot with someone paying full fees?

I don't offer a discount either, for the same reasons others have said.

I dont offer a discount either

Not a cm but totally understand that a discount isn't given

2places are still taken and therefore why lose money

Agree a longer notice period is a good idea esp if may suddenly lose 1/3 of income possibly half is has 2kids of own

I originally planned to charge £4.50 per hour and then £4 for siblings, but changed it to £4.25 each regardless, as it seemed unfair on the single mum of one of my mindees to pay more per hour than the two FT working parents of two DCs.

I think it's important to have set terms and conditions as parents all have their own requirements and ideas about how things should work and I'm very aware of them talking between themselves and finding out that one of them gets a better deal than another, so I've made a point of trying to keep it all the same for every child and every situation.

The joy of being self employed is that you can set your own terms and customers can either fit in with that or find someone else. I try to be flexible and accommodating (I.e. I won't charge late fees at the drop of a hat, I understand that delays are inevitable) but in return I expect that the parents are also understanding of my situation and don't take the piss.